


One Life

by raggedymanandtheponds



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Episode: s02e13 Doomsday, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Porn With Plot, Reunion Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 20:17:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1401139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raggedymanandtheponds/pseuds/raggedymanandtheponds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Rose wouldn't be able to have a normal life, living day to day in Pete's world and The Doctor had no choice but to go back for her. Doomsday AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You're dead, officially, back home," he said, trying his hardest to conceal the pain within his hearts as the women he loved began to weep before him. “So many people died that day and you've gone missing. You're on a list of the dead."

She looked so sad, wilting within herself, like one of the flowers of her namesake.

Yet he knew Rose would have a good life here; a normal, safe, life. She could live out her short life span, with the memories of the universe, and most importantly, forget about him, his daft old face and ignorant choices. 

He was no good for her. All he did was ruin lives and watch the ones he loved died, acting foolish to hide the pain of all his losses. 

Her life was broken now, along with all the things he touched. All her friends thought she was dead, and she might as well be, as she prospered in this universe rather than her own, where her family ties and friendships turned to nothing as the years past. 

Decaying away with all that is and ever will be.

“Here you are," he whispered, dull smile plastered to the lips he wished to seal upon her own. “Living a life day after day. The one adventure I can never have."

She had thick tears streaming from her amber colored eyes, her mascara smudged around the edges and on her flushed cheeks. So beautiful she was to him, even as she wept, or when they had been in a dungeon for a week or two and her body was covered in mud and filth. She always would shine like a star before him, full of grace and kindness.

“Am I ever gonna see you again?"

He looks away, at the ocean that hit the beach with earnest now. What a beautiful sight to those who pass. Two lovers, it would seem, wishing farewell before parting ways. Yet they wouldn't know the true extent of their parting. 

He'd never see her again, and her to him.

“You can't..."

She chokes upon a sob as he wind blew her golden locks over her eyes, obscuring that beautiful face he'd miss as he watched time turned to dust without her presence.

“What're you gonna do?" She whispers, so soft and feeble.

“Oh, I've got the TARDIS. Same old life. Last of the Time Lords."

“On your own?"

He nods silently, watching her with the compassion she always had for the ones they saved. So kind and selfless, she was. Yet here she stood, hopelessly, wanting to be with him, all ambitions gone, begging for him to save her from the wonderful life she could have here. 

He'd be lying if he said he wasn't thinking about tearing the universes in two for her.

“I....I love you..."

Oh Rassilon, why had she have to say that to him?

“And you're all I'll ever get...."

“Don't say that, Rose," he mumbles, tears of his own beginning to fall. “It's a lie and you know it."

“No, it's not! Since that day on Satellite Five, I've changed," she wouldn't meet his eyes, yelling at his shoulder rather than his face. “Everyone around me will wither and die, while I'm just..."

“Brilliant, utterly brilliant, Rose," he interjected quietly, wanting to say so much more but the words stuck in his throat.

She smiled up at him sadly, saying, “I should have died two months ago on a Torchwood mission....shh let me talk. Got shot right in the heart, blood everywhere Owen said. Was in the morgue when I woke up, no wound, nothing."

“How....? I examined you in the medbay and nothing showed up in the scans..."

“Rarely does show up," she mumbled. “Gotta be looking for it to see it. Mutated, my blood cells are. No ones ever seen anything like it. I'll be a lab rat here, soon enough. Not very brilliant, that is."

He didn't know what to say, but he knew his time was slimming and she was waiting for the significant response he couldn't give her.

“This universe will collapse, Rose. All of its history and people will vanish from existence, your father included."

She was trembling, her mother making her way closer in the corner of his eye.

“My father is dead," Rose replied, her eyes so very sad. “Pete doesn't see me as a daughter. The only Rose he knows is a dog."

“Rose..."

She sighed heavily, “If you don't want me anymore, just say it."

“I'll always want you, R-"

She vanished before him, the TARDIS's beautiful essence engulfing him but not giving him any comfort. 

He should have examined her better, to be sure of anything and everything, should have compared her blood cells with Jack Harkness's. But he'd been so utterly stupid and selfish, wanting that 51st century con artist's hands off of his Rose rather than being rational.

It finally, truly, dawned on him. He'd never see her again. Never be in the presence of her warm embrace and brilliant, tongue-touched, smile. Her arms would never wrap around his neck, her strawberry scented shampoo would never overwhelm his senses. She'd never make him laugh when all he wanted was to cry. 

She'd never be that one hand to hold.

“What?!" 

The loud voice said through his agony....wait....a voice?!

He looked at where the voice had been spoken, and there, in the middle of his TARDIS, stood a ginger woman in a wedding dress.

************

Hours later, after killing a massive red spider and her children, Donna Noble became the second person to deny a trip in the TARDIS. 

He wasn't surprised. To someone who had just met him, he must have seemed completely mad and broody, words he didn't quite like very much in this body...well he did like some kinds of mad, like drinking coffee at midnight or going skinny dipping sort, but not the killing kind of mad he seemed to be doing after losing his Rose.

She had been the glue that kept him from crumbling to pieces.

Later that night, back in the TARDIS, the Doctor spent hours doing scans and reading books, trying to find a way to safely travel to an alternate universe. 

How he wished he'd paid attention in his classes back in Gallifrey rather than messing about like any young kid would during Rassilon's rule. 

Days after staying in the library for what seemed like centuries, he finally found something that might work. A vortex, of a different sort. He'd have to adjust some levers in the deep corners of his ship, where darkness lay and he's never dared visit. He's heard stories back home of monsters that live within a TARDIS for generations, never found and never acknowledged. 

He wondered if he'd be the one to confirm those stories as he looked for a way back to Rose.

**********

Rose wakes up upon a lab table, wires connected to her fingertips to her temples. The ringing in her head tells her that she's been hit over the head, with a blunt object it seems by the large bump she feels as she pulls against her confinements. 

“She's waking up, sir," a voice sad. “The wounds on her arms are completely healed, it seems."

Rose tried looking up to where the voice had come from, but her efforts where all for not because she couldn't lift her head up above three centimeters and even if she could there was no way she could see them any how with the room in complete darkness.

She took a deep breath and hoped this wasn't about her abilities. If so, that meant bloody experiments, and with experiments came needles and knives, digging into her flesh, deeper and deeper with each wound that healed.

She might not be lucky like before to have Mickey notice she was missing in time before they shipped her of to the intergalactic black market and sell her to the highest bidder.  
“Oi! Where am I?!" Rose cried, wiggling around angrily, the metal of the table cold against her warm skin. “Better kill me before I get out. The last lot that did this to me, well...s'not nice talkin' bout the dead."

The lights came on all at once with a large pounding of heavy footsteps. 

“Kill you? We'll kill you after you tell us about the blue box," the large man before her grumbled, his voice laced with a faint Northern accent. “Through out time, this box flies. Always lands on the same beach, at the same hour, decades, even centuries apart. Why?"

Bloody hell! She's stuck in bloody different dimension without The Doctor and somehow he finds a way to weasel her into trouble after twenty years. Yet, if the TARDIS is landing on Bad Wolf Bay, through out time, did that mean The Doctor found a way to travel between dimensions and had come back for her? 

“I'm not daft, you just said you'd kill me even if I spoke, so why would I say anything? Just kill me so I don't have to listen to your voice for any second longer than necessary."

He scoffed at her words and nodded to the wide window to her left, and a group of what looked like scientist waddled in, with masks and a table full of needles, scalpels, and knives.

The Northern man began twirling a strand of her now flaxen locks, smirking at her as she pulled at the cuffs around her wrist, saying, “No use, not even the Hulk could get out of those things. So, Rose, what should we do first?"

“I quite like needles, especially the ones with candy in 'em, but I doubt you have those..."

“You have ten minutes to make up your mind. Torture of mercy," they walked out the room but left the tools, giving her only a minute with the light before they once again left her in the dark.

**********

A year had gone by without Rose.

Martha didn't want to travel with him and he was left with nothing more than his thoughts and a restless mind. He had journeyed deep within the TARDIS one night in search of the room all the ancient books spoke of, and when he found it, he couldn't help but smile.

Golden walls etched with circular Gallifreyan words so old, he could hardly read them. A lever extended itself from the center of the room with a single rose on the handle.

He wrapped his slender fingers around it, and pulled, laughing madly as the TARDIS kicked into gear.

Time after time, the TARDIS sent him to the wrong year as he tried finding his way back to Rose, from 18 BC to 3167. Whether Bad Wolf Bay was by an ocean and yet to form, or long gone with the rest of the human race on the planet Earth. Yet he never stopped trying, never stopped pushing the TARDIS, so hard once she couldn't even make it to Bad Wolf Bay and had to land in what seemed to be Pete's World's version of Cardiff. She wanted to rest, and went to where she thought a rift would be. 

Smart girl, his TARDIS was, he thought as he pulled on his coat and sauntered out the front doors, letting the cold autumn air hit his face and ruffle his artistically styled hair. 

He licked his index finger and brought it to the air, humming happily, “Roughly, 2026, getting closer we..."

Right before him, he could have sworn, an older version of Jackie Tyler walked past. Her hair was no longer the bleach blonde he had grown accustomed to, but a natural brown with light streaks of gray. Her brilliant blue eyes were surrounded by wrinkles that came not only from age but wide smiles and the loud laughter she loves to let the world hear. 

The Doctor didn't say a word; let her walk on by to a lunch table where a young ginger, in about his twenties, awaited. 

He had a brilliant tongue-touched grin and hazel eyes that stood out so brilliantly against his pale skin, they may be mistaken for brown. The soft crinkle that came to his nose and the corners of his eyes stood out as he laughed, so innocent and young.

The Doctor knew a Tyler when he saw one.

He hadn't wished to come back so long after leaving them, but here he was, presented with a great opportunity of clarity and he wasn't going to be a fool and pass it up. 

He'd take the slap she'd give if it meant he could find his Rose.

He made his way to the Tyler's, hearts beating in his ears like a consistent drum, beating, beating, pounding so loud he didn't even notice that his name had been spoken.

“Doctor?" Jackie muttered again gently, her eyes foggier than he remembers. “Is that you?"

Her hand was on his shoulder, wrinkled and shaking.

He tried speaking, but as Jackie Tyler watched him, anger-less and caring, all he wanted to do was fall into her embrace. He had thought his family had burned with the rest of Gallifrey, but he'd been wrong, so very wrong. How had he thought he could just leave the Tyler's behind with their souls seared upon his hearts like a tattoo. Like water they were to him, for without them, he'd die.

“Is Rose in that box of yours? 'S very like her to leave without saying goodbye," she smiled, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening. “Don't blame her, though. Never was the same after you left. Sad and alone, she was."

The Doctor shook his head , “No, haven't seen her in a year....since....."

“You're traveling alone?"

“No...had a companion, Martha her name was..."

“Was? Did she...?"

The Doctor smiled sadly, “No, she just got sick of traveling with a blind, daft, old man."

Jackie nodded, looking over her shoulder at the ginger 

“That's Tony," she whispered softly. “Look's just like Pete, he does, same hair and nose. Pete loved him and told him all about that old box of yours, right until the day he got sick."

“Sick?"

She nodded, her dark trusses wavering around her shoulders as she replied, “Early onset dementia. All his stories and memories, gone. By the end, didn't even remember who I was..."

“I'm so sorry..."

“Happened ten years ago, you daft alien! Lost that crazy man once, so I'll just wait for him again, just like Rose's been waiting for you," she smiled at him with that tongue-touched grin he'd grown to love upon her daughter. “She was supposed to be here....but Tony says she didn't even make it to his flat when she said she'd be there...a week ago."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, “Does she do this often?"

“Did it first the first time she ran away with you, so what do you think?" 

“When was the last time you spoke with her?"

“Bout a month ago. Said she was going on a mission with Torchwood....no...they'd tell me if she got hurt, wouldn't they?"

The Doctor glared at his feet angrily, “Not if they're the reason she's missing."


	2. Chapter 2

Rose has been through great odds her entire life; seen the earth die and fought against the universes most feared monsters, yet here she laid, her brain being penetrated by a thin needle, and they really thought what they were doing would somehow get them somewhere. Truly all they were doing was giving her a killing migraine.

“This is completely ineffective, sir. Her brain is unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” a young scientist murmured. “Her regenerative cells produce at two hundred percent of the normal rate…she’s the most unique creature I’ve ever gotten the pleasure of…”

Rose snarled angrily, “Can’t you see you’re torture isn’t working, just kill me and dump my body in the bins or something.”

They had the audacity to laugh at her. 

“You really think we’re going to just let you go, now that we know that you are far more valuable than that stupid blue box,” he trailed his long index finger down her cheekbone, smirking and baring his yellow teeth at her. “So pretty too, you are. Though your hair will look much better dark; think we’ll change it after Alfie done toying around with your brain.”

“My brain is nothing special,” Rose replied, clenching her fist. “Just like any brain.”

He continued touching her and the pit in her stomach churned. She wanted him to burn like the Daleks did under her power; even though she had a feeling he was no more than a run of the mill black market salesmen. He was cold, and his eyes were lifeless, and she knew he had done some terrible things, not only for money, but for pleasure.

He dug his nail into her skin and walked away along with the young scientist 

The lights flicked off once more, leaving Rose with only the ringing in her head.

She wondered if she could try using her telepathy to get help. She had been getting better and better at increasing the distance she could broadcast, and she wasn’t going to be busy for a while, just lying about on a lab table did give her some extra time to practice.

She closed her eyes, and placed all her focus on turning off the pain in her head, trying her hardest to convince herself that she was back in the TARDIS, in the library, surrounded by knowledge, unknown to her and long forgotten to others. So peaceful, and in a single millisecond, the pain was gone and silence enveloped her. She sat down in her favorite chair by the fireplace and placed her fingertips to the sides of the chair, leaning her head back. 

She built up a thought, placed all the emotion she was feeling into it and began searching for someone that’d actually care for her, without telling her captives she was a telepath. She felt the Northerner’s mind, dark and meek, full of greed, and she kept searching, finding many young surgeons and scientist, full of curiosity for her but no compassion for her personal wellbeing.

Further your reach, her subconscious told her, and she listened, pushing her fingertips deeper into the chair as she concentrated. She felt walls forming around her and broke them down with a snap of her fingers, smiling as she felt herself entering the city of Cardiff. 

The faces of the people that past were meek and careless, unknowing of what was happening feet away from them, and most likely wouldn’t do a thing about it, so she carried on. She felt herself nearing the Torchwood headquarters. 

Strange, she thought, they should be able to read her signals from here…

Dread crept up her spine in the form of a shiver. There was no way they’d do this to her, after all that she had done for them. Yet, she knew what Torchwood was capable of doing, had saw it firsthand. They could be cruel to creatures and planets if it would benefit them, and Rose would more than benefit them, she could begin a whole new world if they found a way to replicate her cells.

She searched frantically for anyone now; she needed out, and soon, before Owen came and tell them about her mum and brother, she knew he would to get her to talk. 

'Help, I’m being held captive! I am Rose Tyler, and whoever is hearing this, get ahold of…'

'Rose?'

Her mind went blank, it couldn’t be, it was impossible.

That voice had been mute from her ears for decades, but never forgotten. Like a favorite song, his voice rang within her head for hours to days, repeating the words he could never say. 

'Doctor?'

Rose had missed her Doctor when the moon was full, thinking of the way he would stare up at it like it was one of a kind, even though he had seen so many others just like it. She missed him when she looked at her hands, remembering the days when he needed a hand to hold and she was the one to do it. She had missed him when she walked alone to the shop where she worked, remembering the first day he had grabbed her hand and whispered “Run.”

She knew it was mad to think a man as old and powerful as the Doctor could love an ordinary girl from London when there were women from different galaxies more beautiful and clever. Yet she had been the Bad Wolf, a human who had look into the time vortex and didn’t die. She had destroyed the false god and her Doctor. She gave life and finally felt equal to the near god she loved. 

She couldn’t blame him for not knowing. How could he have known she’d turn out to be immortal just like Jack? How could he know that she’d outlive his double and not age a single day? How could he know that she’d watch everyone she loved wither and die?

Yet he had told her that he could never come back and here his voice rung within her head, clear as day.

'Rose, where are you? Are you okay?'

'They have me hostage, near Torchwood Headquarters, you know where that is right?'

She could feel her heart beating within her ears, pounding and pounding. She couldn’t believe this was happening, after all the years and times she succumbed to prayer, he was finally here.


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor runs, faster than when the Daleks threaten to end all he loves, faster than when he only had only twelve minutes to save the entire universe with only a paper clip and his sonic screwdriver. He runs with the wind blowing through his locks of thick brown hair and reddening his freckled cheekbones, but none of it bothers him because he's going to be with Rose. He's going to hold her in his arms and never let her go, never let his cowardliness separate them.

He wonders what she looks like now, if her hair is the same wavy bleach blonde or if she's dyed it. Are her eyes still gentle and caring, or have the years hardened her? What he hopes for the most is that she'll still have the tongue touched grin that had brought butterflies to his stomach and joy to his heart.

The building is right before him, but it seems so far away still. He wants to be there so badly yet not at all. He has no idea how she'll react to him once she's freed. She might hate him for leaving her behind after she promised him forever.  
So many others hate him, so why would it be a surprise if she did as well.

He crashes through the doors, finally, glaring at the guard that awaits him, as he points his machine guns at him.

“I'd put that away if I were you, because if you don't, I'll destroy everything you love, turn it to ash in your palms," he grabs the gun and presses it to the center of his chest, “Shoot it, I dare you."

The Doctor feels Rose in the back of his mind, screaming for him to stop, to be careful and not get himself killed.

He ignores her and presses the gun into his chest a bit harder, watching the guard with narrowed eyes.

The guard can't be a day over twenty, with meek eyes and a trembling mouth. He would never shoot and the Doctor knows that, so he takes the opportunity to press his fingertips to the boy's temples, putting him to sleep and letting him fall to the ground with a light thud.

The Doctor continues walking, opening up his mind wider and letting her gently voice guide him.

'I've missed you,' she whispers, 'Even when you left me behind with him, I still hoped you'd come back to me.'

The Doctor furrows his brow, 'Left you behind with him?'

'The meta-crisis,' she replies, as if it should be obvious. 'He tried his hardest, but the human life was never good enough for him. He'd live in the middle of the night, and come back in the middle of the day, covered in dirt and blood. He'd act as if everything was alright but I knew the truth.'

He turned a corner and found an open doorway leading to a lab. It was vacant of scientist or doctors, but it wasn't quiet, not in the slightest. Screams and cries echoed throughout the room from a single monitor. It flashed from one prisoner to the other, one chained up while the other was tied to a bed, with people injecting him with big needles, filled with what looked like blood, but was something much more deadly; the Doctor knew from experience. 

It was the Crimson Kiss from the planet Zymor. He didn't think that planet mingled with humans until the year 2301, but that was in his own world, perhaps this Earth was not only advanced in technology but in peace making. It came from the deep red Gylan tree, whose roots bleed whenever it rain. He had only seen assassians use it to kill the planets rock skinned folk, never has he seen it used upon humans; didn't think it was very smart when there was so many easier ways to kill them.

He saw Rose then, pinned down to a lab table with dots of blood covering her fair skin like freckles. 

“Oh god, Rose!"

He pushes open the single door separating them and collapses right beside her. 

“Are you okay, Rose?" He murmurs against her shoulder, leaving a kiss there. “What did they do to you?"

She turns to him with a lazy grin on her full lips, whispering, “My Doctor," before she falls asleep.

He stands up and undoes her restraints, gently rubbing the red marks that were left in there wake. Her hands seem so slight in comparison to his own, trembling, ones. He can't help but think about the days where they would walk upon far off planets, hand in hand, without a care in the world. It didn't matter if she loved him back, or if she'd ever die and leave him alone and weak once more, only that at that moment, their hands fit within one another's perfectly.

But now, she seemed so small and fragile to his old eyes.

He picked her up gently, making his way back to the TARDIS.


End file.
